Large Beast Rider Cavalier mounts

[Mijoszew]

I am currently playing a level 5 human Beast Rider Cavalier. I currently have a horse and have been planning on switching to a bear by 7th level. But that's all irrelevant, aside from the class, in regards to my question.

I have recently contemplated having Enlarge Person cast permanently on myself once I can afford the gp for the casting. The problem with that is there is a complete lack of rules for what mounts are available to Large Beast Rider Cavaliers.(the entry for the Beast Rider archetype only lists possible companions for Small or Medium characters) This is especially a problem since the largest animal companions only reach the Large size category. As it is, it appears that if I were to become a large character I would loose the ability to have an animal companion mount due to lack of rules handling the topic. The most obvious solution is to reiterate the possible size increase rule for Beast Rider companions that occurs at 7th level but to make it increase the companion size to Huge.

I hope one day to be able to ride a huge Mastodon animal companion into battle but currently the rules simply don't allow it but currently the rules don't allow for it. In short if anyone knows of any official rules that would allow this(or even disallow if it must be so) to happen I'd appreciate it if they could point me in the right direction

[MacGurcules]

UMD a scroll to cast Enlarge Person on your mount via Share Spells?

I'm not completely clear if Share Spells only applies to spells that have a range of personal or if it means you can use it to cast anything that you could cast on yourself. Other people seem to have suggested that it works for Eidolons. If so, it should work for a "druid" companion.

[Mijoszew]

Sadly Cavalier animal companions specifically do not posses the share spell ability. I am hoping that there are general rules somewhere for large characters that take the Cavalier class and possibly specifically the Beast Rider archetype, though paying for a second casting is a worse case scenario method to make it work.

[blahpers]

There's still animal growth for the bear, but it isn't on the permanency list. You might be able to do a custom collar or earring or something for your bear; barring that, you'll need a staff or something.

Edit: Or this feat, which lets cavaliers do shared spells (and better, since it works on both of you if you want it to).

[ossian666]

You'd probably have to get a larger creature or apply the template appropriate to size to the animal you'd like to ride. If its bears then you may have to look into stat blocks for direbears etc. The current advancements go from small to medium to large at levels 1 to 4 to 7, so I'd rule it acceptable to increase the size of the beast 1 step at level 10 if it was meant to be a mount.

Its completely reasonable to ask your GM to help you look through the Beastiary at animals that could serve as mounts for you. Obviously he may want some RP here (I'd never HAND a PC a dinosaur to ride...), but if you put the time and money into a permanant spell like that and it made your class useless it would suck quite a bit.

[Mijoszew]

Ossian, that's the kind of approach I've been anticipating. It just seems odd that the official rules would be totally silent on the issue, and with the way the animal companions have changed from 3.5 that means no possible companion mounts for large characters without house rules.

[ossian666]

Thats because there are no playable large races. Those are the types of things that come up and the GM has to adapt for. Sadly they can't accomodate for every scenario that could potentially arise. Thats what broke 3.5 was the unnecessarily HUGE amount of books released.

[LovesTha]

But a huge mount is suitable for medium sized riders as well. And there are lots of reasons why one would want to ride one (Off the top of my head they have a huge strength bonus for a cavalier of the sword to add to their charge attack. For this reason I have thought of having a small cavalier with two mounts, one for indoors and one for outdoors).

[Mijoszew]

I think a reasonable dm would only allow the proposed extra size increase for large characters.(as the similar one which occurs at 7th level, in the beast rider archetype entry, is only for medium characters) Barring that restriction there would start being concerns about what a medium character can reach with a weapon from on top of a huge mount.

[xorial]

Who else read "LARGE BREAST RIDER CAVALIER MOUNTS" & thought WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!?